Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving! There are so many things to be thankful for, I am blessed beyond measure. So very grateful that the home sale and move are complete and we are getting settled in our new home. I am very much looking forward to this Christmas season and all the joy it brings. We are traveling to my Aunt's home today for our big meal with about 20 family members. She has said this is her last year hosting, maybe we will take over hosting next year, our house is big enough to hold everyone now!

I'll leave with a photo of my craft room. It's an in process photo, I'll have a completed one after I've set it up. It's a good photo for today, after all, I am very thankful to have a room of my own again!

Hello Blogosphere!!

Is blogospere a word? I guess not, but I like it. It has been so long since i've posted an entry that I wasn't sure I could remember my password. Good thing I always use the same one! But, if a bad guy is reading this pretend I didn't just say that. What I meant was I have totally different passwords for all of my important internet memberships. And I do really have a special password for my internet banking that's totally random, and that's the only sensitive one really. So, I'm not worried about it. If someone's gonna hack my blog, have at it, it could be interesting!

This year has definitely been a year of changes. We have been making big decisions that led to big hugely time consuming activities. We are at the very beginning of our adoption journey to find our Caroline. That takes lots of money so we decided to sell our busting at the seams home for a larger model. We found a house we love for a great price that left us with some equity money to get started on the adoption. Only problem was we didn't sell our first house in time for the closing on the second, so we had to get a bridge loan. Let me tell you, it is highly stressful taking care of 2 houses and planning 4 bday parties and 4 halloween costumes in there too. oct was almost the end of me. But, most thankfully the first house has sold and we close next wednesday the 25th. hurrah!! We moved into the second house (at least the most important stuff) last weekend and I'm surrounded by piles of boxes. I haven't been able to keep up with the laundry so this past monday, my birthday, i took all the dirty clothes to the laundrymat and did the equivalent of 10 loads. It took forever to fold but at least it was done! In the midst of all this I joined a design team from a great sketch blog, called creatively yours. It's a wonderfully creative team, with a couple good friends on team and my good friend Ali leading us. I'm very much looking forward to joining in!

That's all for now, as things calm down I'll definitely be around more often. I'll leave you with a photo of my kids on halloween.

all in a days work

this post is from another blog that we are turning into our adoption blog, it was originally posted sept 25, 2008. i'm deleting in from over there and didn't want to loose it alltogether.



today I:
took care of one sickie
got 2 littles ready for the day
clipped 20 fingernails
unloaded the dishwasher
loaded the dishwasher
cut and added a cardboard divider into the dog food bin - 2 kinds of food
vacuumed the first floor
put 1 little down for a nap
steamed cleaned the basement carpet
caught a cricket to feed to ds's praying mantis
baked a batch of cookies
ran to the store for a couple things with 3 kids in tow
picked up ds from school
took dd to ballet
cooked a frozen pizza for dinner
took the puppy outside for countless potty breaks
cleaned up several potty "accidents" from puppy anyway
walked/ran a mile on the treadmill
hosted small group at our house

and very few of these things were on my actual list. the list that keeps growing. there are always calls to make and cleaning to get done. but, ds might actually remember that his momma took a couple minutes to go outside and catch him a cricket. i doubt he'll care if i ever get around to making an appointment to get my hair cut and colored. a girl's gotta have priorities.

scrapping across the universe #11

is that right? i think so, #11. the one about BFFs. only i wanted to scrap this pic of e and well, she's not even friends with this girl anymore! at the time they were super close though, so it fits, right? anyway the background paper already had the doodling on it and it worked out so well, easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Hallelujah!

the robins are back! it's official, spring is just around the corner!!
remind me i like robins when they start singing at dawn, okay?

challenge #9 is up at SATU

challenge #9 is supposed to take you back to high school. a high school crush, or who were you in high school. i was a dorky kid that always desperately wanted to be a cool kid. and i still do! i am now a dorky momma who wants to be the cool mom! some things never change! come play at scrapping across the universe!

adventures in parenting

i just wrote out a long post about the stomach bug we've got going through our house and lots of details that were totally to much information.

let's just say that nl got sick in the living room today. it took us by surprise, we thought he was past that part of the sickness. dave tried to get him out of the room and covered nl's mouth as he ran. i got back with a pot before they made it out of the room. but, the mess was huge. the bad news is it took both dave and I 2 1/2 hours to completely clean up. the good news is that dave, nl and joe (the dog) had baths and the area rug and hard wood floors, and coffee table were all cleaned. it even got into the valentine goodie bags that were sitting in bags on the floor. it's one of those stories that we'll laugh about when nl has kids of his own, but right now i can't laugh because i keep thinking i smell more of it!

we're praying e and j don't get it, but at least if they do, they're really good about hitting the bucket. ;)

well, well, well

ok, so i remember i have a blog it's just that life got in the way again. december kicked my butt. having a late thanksgiving plus losing a week to the Nutcracker made the time left to prepare for christmas much too short. i've spent the last month recovering! well, recovering and doing the reorganizing of the house that comes from having to incorporate the contents of a whole toy store. the kids get so many gifts it's really quite ridiculous. i'm still in the process of moving all of the toys we had stored in the shelves in the dining room to the boys room upstairs. they're all old enough to go upstairs to play and bring down a few things to play with if they want to be downstairs. i need some type of storage cabinet/bench for games in the living room. they have a ton of games they don't play with because they're out of sight. i'd rather have the games down here and they can play with them at the table and not lose as may pieces.

prompt #7 is up at scrapping across the universe! it's all about scrapping a family photo! check it out!

POTD Dec 2

this is rehearsal for the nutcracker. E and NL are both in it. it was only a part dress, as their hair isn't done. we'll do the hair mostly (without curls for the girls) for the first rehearsal on thursday at the show site and full dress at the site on friday. the show is 2 performances on saturday. the kids are very excited that it is so close to the show. the closer it gets the more stressed i get! E has 3 roles, 3 costumes and 3 hairstyles!! NL will be easy with just 1 role.

POTD Dec 1

E got the stomach bug last night, she was the last of the kids to get it. she wasn't feeling well enough for school, so we kept her and J home, J mostly so he wouldn't spread the germs we were sure were floating around. so, the kids and i did a craft. the kids colored up some christmas shrinky dinks tom and dawn had given them a couple christmas's ago. i shrunk them and attached them to a pretty red fiber and now we have a cute little decoration. i'll have to get a photo of the finished project. the above photo is the boys watching the magic shrinky dinks in action.

out of the mouths of babes

NL and NT just came upstairs from watching a veggie tales movie called minnesota cuke, it's about bullies. NL walks up to me and says "momma, did you know that God makes it so you can love your enemies?" his eyes were bright with new knowledge. i said isn't that amazing and asked him if he has any enemies. he didn't think he did, but maybe his sister because she wouldn't play with him last night. :)

the other day i heard J and NL talking in the back of the van. J said "God knows everything about you." NL responded with "yeah, and santa too." the holidays are coming, guess he's been thinking about it!

Across the Universe #3

here is my layout for the third challenge. the topic was first love or first kiss. well for NL his first love outside of family has got to be B. she is his favorite friend and he looks forward to seeing her at church and choir each week. the tractor cut out may seem out of place, but the day the pictures were taken we were on a farm, and the colors matched so well. ;)

they rock

e and j's school had an awards ceremony last week for honors from the first quarter. each teacher awards a citizenship award to a boy and a girl in their class each quarter. e and j both got the citizenship awards in their classes! i was very proud! e's class has been together for 2 full years already and she just joined them this year for 3rd grade. so, it was especially sweet in her case. after the 3rd and 4th grade ceremony i told her teacher that j had gotten the citizenship for his class and said "isn't that funny" or something to that effect. she replied "no, that's good parenting!". love her!! actually, i'm sure it's a good portion cool kid and some parenting mixed in.

e also got awards for having straight A's and reading 250,000 words during the quarter.
j also got perfect attendance. there are less awards for the younger kids and they don't get letter grades until 3rd grade in our district. if they did he would have gotten all a's as well as his marks were all o's (the highest mark for k-2nd). i wasn't at his ceremony, but dave was, so the pic of j is on his phone!

a boy and his puppy

NT and Lily snuggling on the heat register last week. I love how Lily is using him as a pillow.

Third Day on the 3rd

My favorite band in the whole world, and the only one I listen to on a regular basis, Third Day. On the 3rd day of the month the have a blog carnival on the bands blog. I thought it would be fun to play along. They are a christian rock band. Their current CD, Revelation, fits my life perfectly right now, I listen to it daily. I wish I could meet Mac Powell who is the front man for the band and writes most of the lyrics. I would like to tell him how powerful his songs are. How so many of the songs are prayers for me. That revelation was exactly what I needed, and that God has given it to me and that his songs helped me realize what I needed and that my priorities were out of whack. Thank You Mac, Mark, Tai and David for your music ministry.